Anyone who runs their own business knows how difficult it can be to keep all the plates spinning at once. Whether your enterprise is large or small, or even if you're a one man band, there are so many things to keep on top of that it's easy to feel overwhelmed. Even if you're able to delegate many duties, the ultimate responsibility lies with the proprietor and so you can never fully free yourself from overseeing all areas of the business.

With this in mind, it's no surprise that anything that can make the situation simpler is likely to be welcomed with open arms, both for making running the business easier, but also for the cost benefits that efficiency brings. One such way of streamlining your operations which not all business owners consider is the use of a commercial credit card account.

The most fundamental difference between a business credit card and a personal one is that with the former you can have multiple cards linked to the same account. It's true that most personal card accounts have the facility of an additional cardholder, such as for a spouse, but business cards take this concept much further.

Each card on the account can be issued in a different employee's name, and each individual employee can be given their own spending or credit limit set by the primary account holder, so long as the total is within the overall credit limit assigned to your account. But how does this system benefit your business?

Firstly, by empowering each employee to carry out the actual process of paying for your business essentials, you're freeing yourself from endlessly signing checks for sometimes trivial amounts of money. There's also much less need for keeping petty cash in the office, which is a great saver in admin and paperwork.

Also, the spending of each employee is fully itemized on your statement, which is a great time-saver when it comes to keeping the books up to date. Of course, you'll still want to retain receipts for your records, but the itemized statements make it easy to see at a glance what is being spent where, on what, and by whom.

Of course, giving your employees the freedom to spend with the company card means that their purchasing activity needs to be monitored, but with today's online systems it's easy to keep track of what's being spent in real time via digital banking services.

Years ago, it was here that the list of benefits would stop. Indeed, most business cards used to be charge cards only, with the entire balance of the account being repaid each month. Nowadays an increasing number of cards are full credit cards, allowing you to spread the cost of purchases over your business cycle, a great aid in terms of cash flow for businesses with revenue that doesn't appear evenly spread throughout the year.

We're also starting to see some benefits which originated in the personal credit sector being carried over into the commercial arena: balance transfers are increasingly common, and you can even get cashback and rewards with some of the newer breeds of card.

So, if you've never previously considered applying for a business credit card, let's review the benefits: delegation of purchasing; employee credit limits; easy monitoring of spending; easier bookkeeping; improved cash flow; rewards and cashback. Maybe it's time you reconsidered?

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